Portland has a good number of rec leagues, where anyone with interest and desire can join a team. We also have our pro teams, the Blazers and the Timbers (despite their complete lack of acknowledgment of the queer community, but, hey, that’s a topic for another post).
Finally, we are lucky to have a league that incorporates recreational play for complete beginners as well as awesome spectating opportunities — the Rose City Rollers. RCR has been kicking around Portland since 2004, and in that time they’ve created an infrastructure that should be the envy of any upstart league.
Earlier this week I came across a very brief and slightly bizarre little article on The Advocate’s website discussing female proclivities towards anal sex. It starts out with the ubiquitous stats on how women are more sexually fluid than men, yada yada yada. Nothing new there. But it goes on to say that:
Among lesbian and bisexual women, the study shows that 48% reported having anal sex with a man, compared to 33% of heterosexual women. Additionally, bisexual women report having more vaginal sex with men than women who say they are completely straight.
Purrrfect Brandie hosts Mrs Pussy Poppin' Friday night
Thursday
Don’t forget the jam packed 30th Annual Gender Symposium at Lewis and Clark going all week long and continuing into Thursday and Friday. An extra special highlight will be Homomentum‘s foray into the all ages space. Minors get ready for a raucous good time!
Trans Life open house – Every Thursday is a chance for trans folks to get together and find out about the programs, support groups and social outings that the Q Center has to offer. This night, allies, friends and partners can also get in on the cross gender fun. Great day for tranny chasers.
From left: Rebecca Cole, Carrie Brownstein, Mary Timony and Janet Weiss from Wild Flag
Lots of excitement has been accompanying new Portland supergroup Wild Flagsince their formation last Summer. The quartet featuring Janet Weiss and Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, Helium’s Mary Timony and The Minders Rebecca Cole been playing sold out shows locally and outside of the area sporadically in the precious few months of their existence. They are also slated to play at SXSW on March 18th.
Now, they’ve made their first single, “Glass Tambourine” available for online listening. A combination of 70s jam rock and 90s indie pop with a healthy dose of grownup 2011 revamping, “Tambourine” is a full and nuanced aural pleasure which you experience for yourself right here below.
Homomentum performs Friday as part of the Lewis & Clark Gender Symposium
For the pop-academia lovers among us this week presents one of the better college conferences on gender and sexuality. Beginning tomorrow Lewis and Clark will kick off the 30th annual Gender Studies Symposium titled New Directions: Gender in the Future. Organized by a committee of students, with support from faculty and staff, the Gender Studies Symposium brings together representatives from academia, activism, and the arts for three days of workshops, roundtable discussions, lectures, film screenings, readings, performances, academic panels, and other intellectual and creative explorations.
This year doesn’t have as big of names as have some past years (i.e. Dorothy Allison, Leslie Feinberg or Angela Davis) but it has a great program nonetheless.
Julia Serano’s Compulsory Genderqueerness: Transsexuality, Feminism and the “End of Gender” on Thursday afternoon should be particularly fascinating. Author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity Serano is an artist, wordsmith, slat poet, and Ph.D. holding science geek.
Welcome back to the glamorous world of flaming film! For all of you with a taste for the absolutely absurd I’d like to proudly present to you…
The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T
You know what they say about people with 5,000 fingers...
“The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T” is definitely a contender for the weirdest children’s film. I mean, maybe the wacky Czech stop-motion “Alice” with dead animals is crazier, but animating taxidermy is really just cheating your way to the top.
Portland Open Studios PR contact Careen Stoll is looking to expand the diversity of POS artists and wanted to reach out to qPDX readers specifically in her search for queer artists.
Special thanks go to Comcast this week. Technical difficulties made it impossible for this post to get done last night and this weekend is front loaded with goodness. So as soon as you’re done reading this, go out and get the party started!
Thursday
Summing at the Parts – new works by Gia Goodrich– Installation art provocateur Gia Goodrichis back. This time she explorers the self-creation of gender as it relates to queer identity using a very (pseudo?) intellectual scale she designed herself called the Gender Perceptivity Scale. I’m sure there will also just be plenty of hotness to perceive.
This is a re-posting of a Facebook message from trans advocate Tash Shatz.
When I was sixteen I woke up one night in a cold sweat in the worst pain I had ever experienced. I felt like I was being repeatedly stabbed in my abdomen. My only guess was that I was experiencing super heinous period cramps. I was nauseous and the pain washed over me in violent waves. My mom and I were soon on our way to the emergency room, and we found out I was passing the first of what would be many kidney stones.
That night at the ER my experience was typical of what would happen as I visited the hospital several times over the next few years. Staff members stumbled over pronouns, sporadically use my preferred name, and asked me what medications I was on. When I answered “testosterone,” the hospital staff launched into a line of questioning about my gender identity – what surgeries had I had? What did I plan to have? What did transgender mean? On more than one of my visits I heard nurses whispering behind the patterned curtain across the space which held my bed. They were talking about my gender.
Portlandia‘s not the only place the 90s seem to be making a comeback. Compared to Sleater-Kinney and The Breedersriot grrl/punk outfit Sick of Sarahis wooing ladies and winning hearts across the music industry with their genuine sound that calls upon their riot grrl roots while still remaining current.
The Minneapolis based band is currently on tour promoting their new album 2205, and will be playing tonight in Portland at Backspace (115 NW Fifth Ave).
